An astronaut (from the Greek "astro," for star, & "naut," for sailor) is simply a person who has tried to sail the stars.
You may be surprised to know that over five hundred people have traveled in space. But only 24 have traveled beyond what is called "low Earth orbit," or beyond 100 - 1,240 miles above the Earth's surface. No one from Earth (that we can verify, anyway) has gone farther than the moon.
"Astronaut" & "cosmonaut" are synonyms. Some might disagree, saying that one is a capitalist & the other a communist. That seems so 1980s. Isn't everyone a capitalist now? Even the communists? I thought so.
Plans for a giant dance floor in space have so far not come to fruition, despite the advent of astronauts not trained by governments. Those astronauts are both capitalist & better-paid (probably) (who knows) (I don't really know) than government astronauts. That last sentence, I ought to really just delete it, because I made an assertion that just sort of spewed out my head onto this blog & didn't even make any sense when I wrote it. But having spent all this time - & three parenthetical expressions - talking about it, it seems weird to just give up on it. Kind of like the Space Program.
There are lots of space programs. I don't mean on the television. (There don't seem to be many of those being newly made these days.) I mean run by governments. Here's a colorful list. I hope more people get to go into space, but I'm not sure I'll be one of them.
I'd be scared of transporters, anyway.
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